（英语语言文学专业论文）《毕斯沃斯先生的房子》中的文化身份问题.pdf

iii 内容摘要 内容摘要 近几年来，一些关注人类的作家获得诺贝尔奖。维 苏 奈保尔是当代著名的后殖 民主义作家，在2001年获得诺贝尔文学奖。他是一个典型的移民作家，与西印度的特里尼 达岛、亚洲的印度和欧洲的英国都有着复杂的联系。他的祖国是印度，出生在特里尼达， 在英国居住和写作，一生都受这三种文化的影响。这种复杂的背景让奈保尔的文化身份具 有不确定性和危机性，大家都称他为“无根作家”或“无根之人”。但是在一个文明社会中没 有人会不具有文化身份，分析奈保尔的文化身份问题对了解其作品中的后殖民意味会有很 大帮助。 在50年中奈保尔出版了30多本著作，他用一种自传体的方式书写人生、旅行和他的后 殖民家园思想。在毕斯沃斯先生的房子这本代表作中，他叙述了一个殖民地人对身份 和个体的追求。这是一个关于印度裔加勒比人毕斯瓦斯先生的故事，尽其一生，他都在寻 找独立、自由和身份。“房子”是他一生奋斗追求的动力，是他的生存基础。在文中，对房 子的向往具有深刻的心理含义和社会意义，表现了殖民地移民对无根的迷茫，对安身的渴 望。从一开始就注定失败的一生却充满着对文化身份的追求，这也正是奈保尔对自己文化 身份的追求。通过本书，奈保尔用其特有的描述方式向我们呈现了殖民社会和后殖民社会 的状况，那种悲伤而又调侃的语调和细致的结构让他的作品更加生动。 论文运用后殖民主义的文化理论来分析在 毕斯沃斯先生的房子 中的文化身份问题。 论文主要分为五部分。第一章介绍小说毕斯沃斯先生的房子的作者奈保尔及其作品， 有关文学评论，及研究的意义。第二章介绍后殖民主义文化理论和后殖民主义理论的先锋 赛义德和霍米巴巴的一些观点。第三章回到“房子”这一中心，第一部分从圣经中的伊 甸园到失乐园和复乐园 ，从汤姆叔叔的小屋到一间自己的房子 ，这些从古 到今的文学作品中都显示出：房子是独立身份的永恒象征；第二部分则是分析毕斯沃斯 先生的房子文中的 “房子”和主人公对文化身份的追求。第四章主要讨论文化身份问题。 运用吉卜林的一句诗句：“东是东，西是西，绝无相遇之期”来探讨东西方由于殖民历史 原因，两种不同的文化是否会真正融合在一起？在文化殖民和文化渗透的后殖民社会中， 苦苦找寻文化身份对于殖民地人来说是遥遥无期和绝望的， 对奈保尔更是如此。 作一个“世 界人”或许是暂时可行的办法。第五章则是结论。 文化身份是后殖民主义理论中的一个中心话题。怎样印证自己的文化身份和克服某些 后殖民困难还仍然是个难题。根据奈保尔在毕斯沃斯先生的房子中向我们表达的那样， 他们对文化身份的追求注定会失败。但是其过程和行为却是首要的和最重要的。 关键词：关键词：维 苏 奈保尔;文化身份;自由 iv abstract writers who care about the human being have been given the nobel prize in the recent years. as a famous writer in contemporary postcolonial literature, v.s.naipaul was given the nobel prize in 2001. he is a typical immigrant writer, and he has a complicated connection with trinidad in western indians, india in asia and england in europe. his native land is india, and he was born in trinidad, living and writing in england and growing up with the influence of the three cultures. this complex background leads to the uncertainty of his cultural identity and the crisis of cultural identification, thus he is called a “rootless writer” or “rootless man”. it is impossible for a man to have no cultural root in a civilized society, for that everyone is an existence in a certain cultural soil. so it is necessary to analyze the constructing state of naipauls cultural identity objectively, which makes his works more understandable. naipaul has published more than 30 works in 50 years. he writes his life, travel and thought in postcolonial homestead in the autobiographical way. in one of his representative works, a house for mr. biswas, a colonials quest for identity and individuality is concentrated. in this book, the author tells a tragicomic story of a colonial brahmin indian living in trinidad. with all of his life, he is in search of his independence, freedom and identity. unfortunately he was doomed to be unlucky, what he wants is a house of his own, which is the solid basis of his existence. that is also v.s.naipauls pursuit of his own cultural identity. in his works, v.s.naipaul manages to find an appropriate style to describe colonial and post-colonial societies. with a pain manner and refined structure, his writings are affecting and charming. this paper will analyze his cultural identity conception in his masterpiece a house for mr.biswas with postcolonial cultural theory. this paper consists of five chapters. chapter i gives a brief introduction to the author of a house for mr.biswas and his writing, some literature review about this genre and the significance of the study. chapter ii discusses the postcolonial cultural theory，as one of reading strategies, and some points of the most vocal expounders of postcolonial theories -said and hommi bhabha. chapter iii goes to the target-“house”, which is an everlasting symbol for independent identity, in some famous literary works, from the garden of eden to paradise lost (1665) and paradise regained (1666), from uncle toms cabin (1852) to a room of ones own (1929); and the “house” mentioned in a house for mr.biswas also represents the pursuit for identity in this novel. chapter iv illustrates some words about cultural identity, an endless and hopeless searching. citing one line of kiplings poem, the author begins to discuss one question: shall east and west meet? and for v.s.naipaul, a temporary solution to seek for his own cultural identity is to be a world citizen. chapter v works as a conclusion. finally, cultural identity is a central theme in post-colonial theory. how to search for ones v cultural identity and overcome some postcolonial problems are still remained unsolved according to the conception of v.s.naipaul in a house for mr.biswas, their efforts are mostly doomed to failure. but the behavior is the primary and the most important. key words: v.s.naipaul；cultural identity；independence ii acknowledgements this thesis owes a great deal to a great many people. first of all, i would like to express my hearty gratitude to my supervisor, professor zhang shuning for his valuable suggestions and patient guidance in completion of the thesis. over the three-year study, his talks and even occasional remarks have sharpened my vision in the research. without his support and encouragement, the thesis would not have achieved its present shape. i would also like to thank all the teachers who has contributed so much valuable instructions and equipped me with so many inspirations and encouragements during the three years m.a. study. special thanks go to professor liu yuhong, professor lu xiaohong, whose lectures on different fields of literature are always enlightening and thought-provoking which greatly inspired me. my thanks also go to professor jin longge who gave me valuable suggestions when i started preparing my paper. finally i would like to thank all my friends for their help and encouragement in the process of writing this thesis. 1 chapter one introduction 1.1 v.s naipaul and his writing vidiadhar surajprasad naipaul was born on august 17, 1932, in trinidad, where his grandfather, an indentured worker, had come from india. naipaul very early experienced a profound alienation, both from the close-knit family life of his brahmin ancestors and from the social and political life of his native trinidad. v.s.naipual firstly was educated in the queens royal college, and then he used the award to escape to england in 1950, where he attended university college in oxford. england, more than trinidad, became his home beginning in the 1950s. the first fruit of naipauls escape from the colony was a series of gently satiric short novels set in trinidad. in the mystic masseur (1957) a semiliterate medicine man makes good as therapist to his village community because of the ignorance and gullibility of the local people. in the suffrage of elvira (1958), naipaul turned a wry critical eye on the first general election held in a town where possibilities for democratic reform abort because of longstanding petty group enmities: hindu-moslem, black-white, indian-spaniard. miguel street (1959) is a collection of vivid character portraits drawn from the authors neighborhood. it tells a story that the young narrator leaves his neighbors to continue his education in life abroad, but will immortalize them in his future role of writer. in 1961, a house for mr. biswas is published and is considered as one of naipauls masterpieces. set also in trinidad, it echoes in some passages the light tone and fun of the earlier, shorter pieces, but achieves the stature of only a few other 20th-century novels largely through the detailed, compassionate picture of biswas. the protagonist is a fictional representative of the authors own father defeated in the struggle for a place of his own, alien both in a matriarchal indian family and in the larger colonial society. using london as a permanent return base, naipaul began to travel extensively after 1960. his prolific writing continued, alternating between autobiographical fiction and reportorial non-fiction based on these travels. the unifying persona is that of an alienated ex-colonial, cut off temperamentally both from his native roots and from the european culture upon which he attempts to graft himself. perhaps naipauls finest sustained writing is to be found in the 1979 novel a bend in the river. here, in a small village in new africa, the writer explores all of his important themes, treated separately elsewhere: the disorder left in the wake of imperialism; the problems of emergent but underdeveloped third world peoples caught between old tribal ways and the new technology of dangerous arms and tinsel consumer materialism; and the liberal white woman as 2 sexual symbol of third world political trust and ultimate despair. here, fortunes are made and lost overnight in gold, copper, and ivory; a hindu couple from africas east coast, poor shopkeepers one day, strikes it rich the next when they are awarded proprietorship of the sole bigburger franchise of the region. instability and alienation are indigenous; the moslem narrator of the novel, back from a short trip abroad, finds his small store nationalized by the big man, president-dictator of the progressive state. after a brief stint in a concentration-camp-like prison, he is lucky to escape with his life. but to what place? he has no home: there could be no going back; there was nothing to go back to. they had become what the world outside had made them; they had to live in the world as it existed. a 1987 work, the enigma of arrival, was classified as fiction, although much of the material is indistinguishable from naipauls own life. the variety of naipauls interests as a traveller-observer is suggested by the following survey of some of his nonfiction. his two personal roots are explored in the fusions of history with contemporary political analysis that make up the loss of el dorado (1969), about trinidad, and india: a wounded civilization (1977). among the believers (1981) records impressions of the authors visits to several important moslem nations, including iran and pakistan. finding the center (1984) includes an essay on his stay in the relatively stable and prosperous west african ivory coast. here the observer analyzes sympathetically the balance of power between competing tribal and european values. in 1996 naipaul released the worlds great places an area of darkness to favorable reviews. naipaul published several new works in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including a turn in the south (1989), india: a million mutinies now (1990), and way in the world: a sequence (1994). naipaul reviewed in his lecture his life journey and his career as a writer, the two inseparable parts of his life. one of his worlds is his homeland trinidad and the rest of the third world countries. the other of his world is england where he was educated and naturalized. the two worlds supply the grand background and subjects for his writings. he said, “i said i was an intuitive writer. that was so, and that remains so now, when i am nearly at the end. i never had a plan. i followed no system. i worked intuitively. my aim every time was to do a book, to create something that would be easy and interesting to read. at every stage i could only work within my knowledge and sensibility and talent and worldview. those things developed book by book. and i had to do the books i did because there were no books about those subjects to give me what i wanted. i had to clear up my world, elucidate it, for myselfi am near the end of my work now. i am glad to have done what i have done, glad creatively to have pushed myself as for as i could go.”(naipaul 1964: 11) 3 v.s.naipaul has been compared with ishiguro and rashdie by mass media and they have been considered as three outstanding writers in postcolonial literature. literary critics all agree that v.s.naipaul is a true nobel prize winner. his novel and travelogue reveal the wounds in the hearts of immigrants who have lost their cultural roots in the postcolonial era. 1.2 an introduction of a house for mr. biswas 1.2.1 the background of a house for mr.biswas trinidad is v.s.naipauls birthplace and the setting for a house for mr.biswas. also a place where mohun biswas spent his lifetimealmost fifty years-during the first half of the twentieth century. the caribbean island of trinidad is a part of the republic of trinidad and tobago, an island nation, seven miles off the northeast coast of venezuela. about 40 percent of todays approximately 1.2 million trinidadians are of african descent; another 40 percent are of indian descent; and the rest, sometimes refers to as creoles, are mixtures from different ethnic backgrounds. this situation was caused by history reasons. the first european to arrive on the island was christopher columbus, during his third voyage, in 1498. at that time, people speaking the arawakan and carib languages already lived there. about two hundred years later, spanish people began settling in the zone, bringing with them enslaved people from africa. spain encouraged roman catholic people from other countries to move to the island, and the french settlers who came in large numbers greatly influenced its culture. britain seized control of trinidad from spain in 1797, and under its rule the population became even more multicultural. laborers arrived from india, and many immigrants from other nations, including china, lebanon, and africa, settled in the region. since 1962, trinidad and tobago has been independent from britain. nowadays this region is relatively wealthy, compared with many of its caribbean and latin american neighbors. the country contains huge oil refineries and natural gas industry, which dominate its economy and replaced sugarcane as the major source of wealth. its culture is affected by trinidads diversity. english is the official language; bur four creole languages (mixtures of english, spanish, french, and african tongues) are also spoken, as are some east indian languages. the complex history and the multicultural society, with many years demanding self-government of trinidadians after their independence from britain, all these years of transition serve as a backdrop for mr.biswas story. 1.2.2 a bref introduction of a house for mr. biswas a house for mr.biswas was published in 1961. in his novel, naipaul continued to focus upon the life in trinidad. taking his fathers case as raw material, v. s. naipaul described an ordinary individuals experience of striving for a better life. the novel gained wide spread 4 attention both in britain and in trinidad and has been translated into varies languages and reprinted for more than 10 times. mr.biswas, whose father migrated from india to be a laborer in trinidad, was born with one of his hands having 6 fingers and which was considered as an unlucky omen. he had been discriminated for it since he was a child. he struggled to seek his fortune as well as his root and identity. when he got married, his wifes family also looked down on him. so he wanted to be a journalist. he wanted to publish articles in newspapers so that he could gain respect from others. in addition, he wanted to have a house of his own. a house of ones own means a successful career and economic independence. he finally achieved what he wanted through tough struggle. his son, anand biswas, was not satisfied with the life in trinidad and left for britain. when he completed his education in britain and came back to trinidad, his father had already died of illness in his own house, leaving behind $3000 debt and a family in poverty. with a slow, fluent and simple narrative style, the novel, as a combination of biography and documentary records, gives a picture of an ordinary individuals life in line drawing. the compassionate mood of narrative makes the novel a true masterpiece. 1.3 literature review and the significance of the study 1.3.1 literature review a house for mr.biswas brought v.s.naipaul worldwide acclaim. this novel is an important one in his early writing career for naipaul. there are an abundance of studies concerning v.s.naipaul and his work abroad, especially in great britain and usa. a lot of topics have been subdivided in many major european colleges. writing in the new york review of books about naipaul, joan didion said: the actual world has for naipaul a radiance that diminishes all ideas of it. the pink haze of the bauxite dust on the first page of guerrillas tells us what we need to know about the history and social organization of the unnamed island on which the action takes place, tells us in one image who runs the island and for whose profit the island is run and at what cost to the life of the island this profit has historically been obtained, but all of this implicit information pales in the presence of the physical fact, the dust itself. the world naipaul sees is of course no void at all: it is a world dense with physical and social phenomena, brutally alive with the complications and contradictions of actual human endeavor. this world of naipauls is in fact charged with what can only be described as a romantic view of reality, an almost unbearable tension between the idea and the physical fact.(joan 1980: 27) more than three-quarters of the people living in the world today have their life shaped by the experience of colonialism. naipauls success is generally related with the economic development 5 of these nations, which used to being under the colonial role. they have become more significant actors in world affairs than they were during the colonial period. and since 1980s, the swedish academy has been especially concentrated on those writers who have been more or less affected by the process of colonialism. for example, the worlds highest literary honor-the nobel prize has been awarded to nigerian playwright soyinka in 1986. in 1991, this honor went to south african woman novelist gordimer,